Denny had left dozens of windows open on his desktop. She began to flip through them. Interspersed between the porn and the pop-up ads, she could see that he’d been doing research on the statue. Every generation or two, hidden in the city’s history, he had found outbreaks of mass satyrism: spontaneous incidents of bacchanalian violence and sexual abandon, as if some spirit of rapacity had bubbled to the surface, horrors that grew in scope and depravity with each event.
She felt suddenly nauseated.
Denny. There was only one place he could be.
As she made her way through the dark woods, the overwhelming pungent smell of the goat hung heavy in the air, and the sound of drums and screaming echoed through her mind. Mounds of dirt had been tossed up around the statue’s base, with more being flung up from the hole as she approached. A shovel stood with its blade buried in the pile, the tags from the hardware store still dangling off the handle.
Denny crouched naked in the deep hole he had excavated, frantically clawing at the earth. She was surprised to see that the statue’s pedestal extended down at least six feet underneath the ground. It was the spire of some larger structure buried in the earth at the city’s heart. Denny was standing on a stone slab from which rose a fetid reeking heat. He looked up at her, mumbling and without recognition. His fingernails were torn and bloody. His manhood was engorged and impossibly large.
She grabbed the shovel from the dirt pile as he began to scramble up out of the hole. With a sickening crunch, she struck him on the head with the heavy steel blade. He tumbled back and did not move again. As she shoveled dirt over Denny and the slab she could hear the clawing and scratching of the thing entombed beneath.
Montfort Farm
By R. Christophe Ryber
“That won’t work here, Mr. Stockbridge.”
Ryan turned away from the picture window looking out on the gravel driveway, where his gleaming black Audi baked in the late afternoon sun. His sharp blue eyes drilled into the lawyer sitting in the high-backed Victorian chair in the parlor, neat stacks of papers lined up before her on the coffee table.
Rebecca Kimball pointed with her silver pen at the Blackberry in Ryan’s hand. “There’s no cell service here.”
Ryan ran his fingers through his short blond hair and frowned at the maddening lack of bars on the plastic screen. He had only driven into Greenfield a few hours ago and he couldn’t wait to put its quaint covered bridges and scenic mountains in his rearview mirror. The Blackberry was his only contact with his partner, Craig Gordon. Craig was in Hartford struggling to keep their business, Fast Cat Electronics, from going under.
“Could we move this along, Mr. Stockbridge?”
Ryan shoved the Blackberry into the jacket pocket of his gray suit. He bit his lip as Rebecca Kimball let her silver pen roll out of her long fingers onto the first stack of papers. The hardwood floor underneath the thick, floral rug creaked as he paced back and forth.
“Grandma Catherine never mentioned anything about a farm,” he said.
Rebecca glanced at her Rolex and sighed. “Your grandmother was a Montfort before she married Edwin Stockbridge. The only living heirs to Montfort Farm are yourself and Sophie Montfort.”
Ryan stopped before one of the twin arches on either side of the great fireplace. He could smell the ashes behind the ornate stained-glass screen, with its clusters of grapes and Greek Pan prancing about with flute and golden goblet.
“If this Sophie girl is a Montfort and already lives here, then why isn’t the farm passing to her?”
Rebecca brushed back her blond bangs and picked up her silver pen. She stacked the piles of papers together and opened her briefcase.
“Mr. Stockbridge, I explained the family defect when I phoned you in Hartford. I can see you’re not interested—”
“And I can see you’re in a hurry to get this over with.”
The powder blue Wedgewood china in the curio cabinet rattled as Ryan threw himself onto the faded sofa. He pulled out his Blackberry and called up the last spreadsheet Craig had sent him.
“I have a business in desperate need of capital, Ms. Kimball. I spent six hours driving to this tourist trap because you led me to believe there were liquid assets associated with the estate. So far all I’ve seen is a rundown Victorian with a barn and sugarhouse.”
A smile crept over Rebecca’s face. “Let’s cut to the chase then, Mr. Stockbridge.”
She reached into her briefcase, removing a black folder. Ryan snatched it out of her hand and flipped through the documents inside. He raised a blond eyebrow, adjusting his red silk tie.
“Vale Corp? All of these shares are for Vale Corp?”
Rebecca nodded. “Olivia made some shrewd investments in the eighties. I must apologize, Mr. Stockbridge, if I seem eager to finish this, but Olivia Leighton-Montfort was a good friend of mine, and I have been managing her affairs since her unexpected death.”
Ryan waved a hand in dismissal. His blue eyes widened each time he turned a page. He held in his hands the salvation of Fast Cat Electronics. If only he could call Craig.
“Get your hands off me, you piece of shit!”
Ryan jumped up from the sofa and the portfolio fell to the floor. He looked toward the back of the house, where the angry female voice continued to shout profanities, then over at Rebecca. She stood and smoothed out her pants suit. Her forced smile didn’t hide the tremor in her voice.
“Perhaps it’s time we met Sophie.”
The wood-framed screen door slammed shut behind Ryan as he followed Rebecca out onto a thick carpet of clover and dandelions. An ancient maple stretched its great limbs overhead toward the old Victorian.
A tall man in faded jeans and a plaid shirt backed into the lengthening shadows under the tree. He stumbled as his tan work boots caught on the gnarled roots lying half buried around the tree’s base. A tawny barefoot woman stalked him, her white cotton summer dress stained with purple splashes. Ryan guessed they were from the green wine bottle she waved about in one hand. Something silver flashed in her other hand, and it looked like she was threatening the tall man with it.
“Back off me, Stoddard. You ain’t the boss of me.”
“Sophie!”
Sophie planted her brown lips on the wine bottle and took a long swig before poking the man in the chest with the silver rod.
Ryan squinted. A flute?
“Sophie!”
Rebecca called after her again, sighing as she navigated through the overgrown clover. Sophie turned and waved the bottle in greeting.
“Hey, Becca.”
“Sophie, leave poor Tom alone.”
Sophie slipped past Rebecca, dismissing the incident with a toss of her tangled auburn hair. Ryan met her sullen hazel eyes as she came toward him.
“Who’s Captain America?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, maintaining his poker face. Genetic defect? Ryan had pictured some withdrawn, mentally handicapped woman, not a statuesque, outspoken alcoholic. His cheeks flushed as her body in its thin cotton sheath brushed against him. The scent of earth and wine flooded his nostrils. Her hair smelled like summer.
Ryan gave Rebecca a puzzled look. She traded glances with Tom, then nodded.
“Sophie, this is Mr. Stockbridge.”
Ryan shook his head when Sophie offered him the wine bottle. She threw him a dark look over her shoulder as she sauntered back toward Rebecca.
“Yeah, the one that gets my farm.”
Rebecca sighed and glanced at her Rolex again.
“It’s not like that, Sophie. This is your home—always. Mr. Stockbridge is going to take care of the business end of things.”
“Possibly,” Ryan added, and he didn’t miss the glare Rebecca shot him. Sophie dumped herself cross-legged in the grass. She set the wine bottle in a clump of dandelions and placed her brown fingers on the flute’s keys.
“I don’t need no boss.” She raised the flute and began to play.
Ryan’s eyes widened. “Ba
ch—Sonata in E-flat major.”
Rebecca nodded. “Sophie’s quite talented.”
Tom, clearing his throat, hooked one thumb in his belt. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
Rebecca nodded again and edged closer to Ryan. “She’ll be like that for a while. Perhaps we could use this time to finalize the arrangements.”
Ryan’s blue eyes narrowed. “The Vale Corp stock—”
“Totally liquefiable. Sell it all. The farm, though, and Sophie, we have to talk about.”
Ryan smiled and extended his arm. “After you.”
***
Ryan pulled on the wrought iron handle, and the red door turned on its well-oiled hinges. He squinted through the few beams of fading sunlight that cut through the sawdust clouds. The setting sun at his back cast a long shadow over the freshly swept floor. An electric motor buzzed in the darkened barn, and bright red sparks skittered around Tom’s work boots.
Tom flipped a switch and the motor whirred to a stop. Another switch clicked and a bank of fluorescent lights snapped and popped to life.
“Who builds a round barn?”
The pinewood boards creaked under Ryan’s leather dress shoes as he stepped inside. The grinding wheel Tom had been working at continued to free spin like the vanes on a windmill. Tom inspected the axe’s sharpened edge under the flickering blue light. He nodded at Ryan.
“Pret’ near everyone, at least at the end of the 1800s, when this barn was built. Better for hayin’—that is till everything got mechanized. Then they went back to rectangles.”
Ryan looked over the stacks of firewood and fingered the polished wooden handles of the farm tools that hung along the walls. He hoisted a weathered pitchfork out of its slot by the door. Tom tapped the rusted tines of the fork with the butt of his axe.
“’Course we don’t hay anymore. Miss Olivia got us into sugarin’, which pretty much saved the place. Now the only farmin’ we do is for the tourists—Indian corn, pumpkins, gourds—stuff like that.”
Leaning his axe against a greasy hydraulic splitter, he added, “We use the barn mostly as a woodshed. The sugarhouse burns through a lot of wood.”
Ryan set the pitchfork back into the wooden rack. “Did you know Olivia well?”
Tom’s lips curled into a thin smile. “Oh, I know the Montforts. I started workin’ for Miss Olivia when I got out of college.”
“College?” The word was out before Ryan could stop it. He cursed himself as Tom’s gaze narrowed.
“Yeah. We have them here, too. Palmary College over in Craftsbridge. Agriculture.”
Ryan opened his mouth, thought of nothing to say, and nodded.
“You one of them college jocks, Mr. Stockbridge? Look like one.”
“Track and field. You know—javelin, discus.”
“We had cows at Palmary.”
Tom grunted and shut the fluorescent lights off, his baseball cap silhouetted against the purple sky beyond the doorway. Ryan followed him out. The swollen red sun had run aground on the hills beyond Greenfield and had dyed the white spire of the Unitarian church pink. Tom pushed the heavy door shut until it clicked, then rattled it once to be sure.
“You fish, Mr. Stockbridge?”
“Please, call me Ryan.”
“Fly fish, I suppose.”
Ryan nodded. Tom smiled and pointed at the dark line of trees beyond the sugarhouse—old maples, white birches, gnarled oaks. Their thick trunks and towering leafy crowns stretched unbroken down the side of the mountain into the valley.
“That’s Westminster Wood. You take that trail right there about a quarter mile and you’ll come to Hunger Hollow Falls. There’s a pool there with brookies in it.”
Ryan fought down the instinctual “no.” You know squat about how this farm works, and you’ve already insulted the one man you really need. Who else can you leave in charge when you go back to Hartford—the drunk cousin?
“I’d like that, Tom. Got an extra pole?”
Tom adjusted his cap and they began trudging up the grassy hill toward the gravel drive, where Tom’s faded blue pickup sat parked next to Ryan’s Audi.
“I’ll lend you mine. Got to do another planting tomorrow while the weather holds. But I’ll leave the rod in the kitchen. It’s already got a fly on it. Try not to lose it. I’ve had it on there since last summer.”
The two men paused at the edge of the drive to look at the house. Ryan could just make out the twirling form of Sophie on the wraparound porch as she spun into an arabesque before plopping herself down in the porch swing, her long middle finger raised in their direction. Tom grunted. His work boots crunched across the gravel to his truck.
“Have fun with that. I’ve got to stop at the Wright’s and see Becca.”
Ryan couldn’t resist any longer. “You know Rebecca Kimball?”
Tom nodded. “She’s my cousin. Stoddard on her mother’s side.”
Ryan didn’t miss the gleam in Tom’s eye as he leaned out of the cab window.
“Everyone’s related in Greenfield. One way or another.”
***
“Piece of shit.”
Ryan slurped at the steaming black coffee. He set the homemade ceramic mug, covered in purple grape clusters and creeping green vines, down next to a heart carved into the old oak desk. He traced the letters notched into the heart with his finger—ES & BM—then wiped at the grime on the computer screen with the sleeve of his bathrobe, clicking away in frustration at the coffee-stained mouse.
He pounded the blackened CTRL-ALT-DEL buttons once again, rubbing his bleary red eyes. His night in the guest room had been a frigid nightmare. Didn’t they believe in heat around here? Once the sun set, a cold breeze had crept down off of the mountain and Ryan had shivered under his quilt, longing for the central air in his Cape house.
When a reluctant, frigid sleep finally accepted him, it was full of long brown limbs and defiant hazel eyes, the dulcet tones of Bach’s Sonata in E-flat and . . . something less pleasant.
He had awoken to find himself sitting ramrod straight in the canopied bed, his bare skin goose fleshed in the mountain air. He had thrown the covers off and padded across the cold hardwood floor to the open window; had paused there and squinted through the predawn gloom, his hands on the window frame to lower it against the early morning chill.
Had it been his imagination or was the ground fog seeping out of the wood bordering the farm?
Then the thing in the dream had bubbled to the surface of his mind. At the remembrance of the shadowy, horned figure, Ryan had slammed the window shut and pulled the drapes.
The spooks of the night had vanished with the rising, yellow, midsummer sun. And Ryan had shuffled out to the dew-covered Audi in his bathrobe to grab his laptop. Now he connected a cable between the laptop and the obstinate machine on the graffiti-covered desk and powered up.
He shook his head as the lines of code scrolled up the screen. How the hell did they get so corrupted? It was like somebody had thrown a wrench in there. He let the two machines fight it out and turned to the safe at the side of the desk. He opened the folder Rebecca Kimball had given him yesterday after he had leaned over the hood of her Volvo and scribbled his signature with her silver pen. He found the combination on the back of her business card and spun the dial, left-right-left.
Nothing.
Okay, fine. Right-left-right.
Still, the steel lever refused to budge.
Ryan cursed under his breath and rattled the handle.
“You ain’t gonna open it like that.”
Ryan swiveled in the office chair. Sophie leaned against the door jamb in the same purple-stained cotton shift she’d worn the day before. Her bare toes cracked as she curled and stretched her feet like a ballerina warming up. Ryan slid back to the desk and checked the scrolling numbers on the computer.
“You know how to get it open?”
Her full brown lips bent into a smile. “Don’t matter. Becca changed the combination after the funeral.”
Sophie pounced out of a pas de chat and landed next to Ryan, her thigh sending the chair into a spin. He pulled himself back to the desk as Sophie leaned over to peer at the business card lying on the laptop keyboard.
“Yep. That’s Mom’s old combo.”
Ryan cursed again, slamming his fist down on the desk. The laptop jumped. He needed to get his broker moving on the Vale Corp stock. Craig would bail soon, and Fast Cat Electronics would be history. How could these people not have a phone? He’d have to drive into Greenfield later, but first he needed to crack the safe.
He started as a warm brown hand covered his. Sparkling hazel eyes met his own when he looked up.
“Temper, temper, Mr. Stockbridge. You got some Montfort in you, after all.”
They both jumped at the knock on the open door.
“Am I interrupting?”
Tom adjusted his baseball cap, stepping aside as Sophie stormed out of the office. Ryan shook his head, slid the office chair back. Tom lifted the bamboo fly rod he was holding and tapped Ryan’s shoulder.
“Brookies bite in the mornin’.”
***
“The trail ends at the falls. No need to go farther than that. You get into the wood on the other side of the brook—things get weird.”
Tom’s words echoed in Ryan’s head as he stared into the dark pool of swirling water. The falls rumbled deafeningly, trembling the ground underfoot.
His oxfords skidded on a wet rock, and he wrapped his desperate fingers around an overhanging branch. He hung there a moment, above the churning water, then caught hold of a flatter, drier rock.
I’m not exactly dressed for this. If I fall in, no one will ever hear me.
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